Tag: midterm elections

TBT^2: The Morning After

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I’ve been pretty salty—in the parlance of the kiddos these days—about the midterm election results, a level of disappointment I haven’t experienced since the 2020 presidential election.

It brought me back to this post, in which I opine about Trump’s loss and the stolen election.  My hope was that the Republican Party would embrace the working-class voters that helped Trump win in 2016, lest they simply “return to being the party of agreeable losers.”

Looks like—ironically—the “agreeable losers” won, and have made losers of us all.

With that, here is 4 November 2021’s “TBT: The Morning After“:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Disappointment

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Well, the midterm elections have come and gone, and my primary reaction is bitter disappointment.

I’d been tepid about the elections this year, barely taking notice of them, but allowed myself to fall for the “red wave” hype.  In a sane world, that should have happened—a major backlash against inflation and insanity.

Instead, we have a brain-dead automaton in the United States Senate and a lean Republican majority in the House—a majority, I fear, that will be ultimately meaningless.  At the time of writing, the balance in the Senate itself is questionable, and the Democrats may even walk away controlling it—completely the opposite of what we all thought would happen.

I was a fool to get my hopes up about national politics.  Even had the Republicans taken huge majorities, what would have been the result?  Would anything have substantially changed?

Perhaps with time I’ll take a more measured response to events, but right now, it seems like our national republic is a joke, and the American people are addicted to government largesse and cultural degradation.  We don’t want to improve, and we don’t want to be free.  We want to be children, and children can’t govern themselves.

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Election Day 2022

The Portly Politico15 Comments

Well, here it is—Election Day 2022.  The much-vaunted midterms have arrived, and it looks like it’s going to be a pretty good day for Republicans.

I’ll admit, I’ve been tuned out from and burned out on politics of late, and while I’m optimistic about today’s results for Republicans, I’m a tad disillusioned with the state of electoral politics generally.  Will a “red wave” result in some meaningful reform this time around, or will GOP Establishment types wrangle the feisty upstarts and neutralize the MAGA Wing?

I’m not a “doomer” by any stretch—I sincerely hope for the latter, and I think it is the future of the Republican Party, if the GOP hopes to survive as a viable political party.  History, however, is not an encouraging indicator.

That said, a sweeping Republican victory is, by any measure, vastly preferable to a sweeping Democratic one.  At worst, I know a Republican House and Senate won’t screw things up further, and may make some marginal improvements; but a Democratic House and Senate, at worst, will double-down on the current insanity of lawlessness and moral relativism.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Malfunctioning Robots

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After two years under the befuddlingly tyrannical rule of a mentally-impaired geezer, our electoral standards have slid to meet the lowered expectations of our time.  Now a mentally-impaired greaseball wants to be the United States Senator for Pennsylvania, and until a disastrous debate performance that was impossible to ignore, it seemed that Pennsylvanians were willing to vote for him.

To be clear, I take no pleasure in the profound illness of another person.  John Fetterman suffered a stroke—a terrible thing—but he is still pursuing public office.  As much as Henry Clay disliked Andrew Jackson in the 1824 presidential election, he wasn’t going to throw his support behind Secretary of Treasury William Crawford of Georgia (the election was thrown to the House of Representatives; Crawford was in third, but had suffered a major stroke and would pass away soon afterwards, with Clay giving his support to John Quincy Adams).

But we’ve grown accustomed to power-hungry wives and political parties propping up brain-dead puppets in public office.  Indeed, the historians of the distant future will no-doubt look back at our time and think of it as The Age of The Impaired.  We celebrate every manner of impairment—transgenderism, paralysis (both moral and physical), gluten intolerance, etc.—as some kind of special mark of holiness.

Of course, we should treat such people with compassion, but we shouldn’t be electing them to public office, no matter how good it makes us feel about ourselves to do so.  Public service is hard, even for the able-bodied and clear-minded.  Being a United States Senator is exceptionally difficult—and a position with incredible amounts of power and prestige.

What we saw with Fetterman—much like Marco Rubio’s glitching out in 2016—was an Establishment robot malfunctioning on live television.  I’m only being mildly hyperbolic—Fetterman can only process incoming sounds via a computer.  That’s a miraculous bit of technology, but do we want a cyborg serving as one of the 100 men and women of the US Senate?  Even if we did, would we want one that was constantly breaking down in stressful situations?

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Loomer and Liz

The Portly Politico6 Comments

Today Laura Loomer—the most censored woman in America—is taking a stab at the Republican nomination for her congressional district in Florida, which includes The Villages, the massive retirement community.  She’s running against incumbent Daniel Webster, who skipped the Trump impeachment vote and is therefore, according to Loomer, complicit in it, as well as some swarthy nobody who might get a couple of percentage points.

Laura Loomer’s election—if she wins the primary, she’ll very likely win the very pro-Trump Florida 11th congressional district—would be a major boon for the America First movement, and would be yet another repudiation of the Establishment Republicans who are content to fiddle about an “insurrection” while the nation burns.

That very same Establishment suffered a major defeat last week, when busybody and daddy’s princess Liz Cheney fell to a Trump-endorsed candidate in the Republican primary for Wyoming’s single congressional district.  Cheney’s defeat was a drubbing of epic proportions:  she only garnered 28.94% of votes cast, with her opponent Harriet Hageman winning with 66.33% of the vote.  Talk about a “repudiation of the Establishment Republicans,” am I right?

It’s a tale of two candidates.  Liz Cheney represents the ossified, corrupt, dynastic, moralistic, staid, boring, ineffectual, kabuki theatre style of politics that has haunted our dear Republic for the last century.  Loomer, on the other hand, is the bold, persecuted, spicy, fun, energetic, bombastic future.

If she wins today, it’s icing on the cake of Cheney’s defeat.

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Lazy Sunday LXXXV: Elections

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The fun of Halloween has passed.  Now it’s on to the election, which is just two days away.  The joyful gatherings of Halloween weekend might be the last bit of fun and togetherness for some time, depending on how things shake out this Tuesday.

I am praying fervently for a Trump victory, and for Republicans to maintain their control of the Senate and to retake the House.  Such an outcome would mark a major repudiation of the Democrats’ radicalism.  More importantly, it could save the Republic—or, at the very least, forestall its demise for another few years.

For this Lazy Sunday, then, I decided to look back at posts about elections from years past:

That’s it for this Sunday.  Please, please go out and vote for Trump on Tuesday, especially if you’re in any of the swing States.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

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TBT: Election Day 2018

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Two days ago I wrote about Election Day 2019, and posted results yesterday.  In selecting this week’s , then, I thought I would look back to November 2018 to see what I’d cooked up.

Boy, were the pickings slim.  Other than the post below, I reblogged my annual Thanksgiving message, and posted a Veterans’ Day talk I delivered to the local Republican Party.  I’d really let the blog slide as I dove into another busy school year.

It’s amazing how quickly time flies.  Not only did losing the House “stymie” President Trump’s agenda; they’re straight-up impeaching him—their plan all along.  We managed to hold onto the Senate, but by a slimmer margin than I hoped.  I also don’t trust Mitt Romney for a minute, so I think we can slot him in with the Democrats.

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Ted Cruz on Ben Shapiro

The Portly Politico1 Comment

It was a glorious weekend at Casa de Portly, deep in the heart of Dixie.  It was the kind of weekend that saw a lot of non-blog- and non-work-related productivity; in other words, I loafed a great deal, then did domestic chores around the house.

In case you missed it, on Saturday I released my Summer Reading List 2019.  If you want to read the whole list—and it’s quite good—you have to subscribe to my SubscribeStar page at the $1 level or higher.  There will be new, subscriber-exclusive content there every Saturday, so your subscription will continually increase in value.

Anyway, all that loafing and cleaning meant that I was unplugged from politics.  I did, however, manage to catch the Ben Shapiro Show “Sunday Special” with Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

I was a big fan of Cruz in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, and I voted for him here in South Carolina.  Cruz intuited the populist mood of the electorate the way that President Trump did, and combined it with policy innovation and constitutionalism.

There’s a reason Cruz hung in there as long as he did against Trump:  he’s a canny political operator, but he also knew how to pitch a conservative message that was appealing to many voters.  I sincerely believe that had he clinched the nomination, he would have won the 2016 election (and, perhaps, by an even wider Electoral College margin than did Trump).

Cruz catches a lot of flack because he’s a little dopey and looks odd—a whole meme emerged in 2015-2016 claiming that Cruz was the Zodiac Killer—but he’s been an influential voice in the Senate.  He possesses a supple, clever mind, and has urged Republicans to make some bold, innovative reforms to the Senate (he vocally champions and has proposed a constitutional amendment for congressional term limits).

The hour-long interview with Ben Shapiro—which opens with a question about his alleged identity as the Zodiac Killer—shows how affable and relaxed Cruz really is.  I’ve never seen him appear more relaxed and genuine (and I never took him for a phony—I’ve seen him speak live at least once at a campaign rally in Florence, and spoke very briefly to him afterwards) than in this interview.

Granted, it’s friendly territory—Shapiro was a big supporter of Cruz in the primaries—but Cruz spelled out some important ideas, as well as his projections for 2020.  If you don’t have a full hour, fast forward to about the forty-minute mark for his discussion of Trump’s reelection prospects.

To summarize them briefly:  Cruz thinks it all comes out to turnout, and that Democrats will “crawl over broken glass” to vote against Trump.  He even points out that his own race against Democrat Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke was as close as it was because Beto ran against Trump more than he did against Cruz.  He also thinks Joe Biden is going to flame out, and one of the more radical, progressive Dems will clinch the nomination, making the prospect of a truly socialistic administration terrifyingly possible.

That said, Cruz is optimistic.  Discussing his own narrow victory over Beto in 2018, he points out Beto’s massive fundraising and staffing advantages (Cruz had eighteen paid staffers on his campaign; Beto had 805!), but explains that a barn-burning bus tour of the State of Texas pulled out conservative and middle-class voters in a big way for his reelection.

That points to one of Trump’s strengths:  the relentless pace with which he campaigns.  Trump held three and even four rallies a day in key battleground States in the final days of the 2016 election, which likely made the difference in Michigan, Wisconsin, and the Great White Whale of Republican presidential elections since the 1980s, Pennsylvania.  If Trump can get his pro-growth, pro-American message out there as effectively in 2020 as he did in 2016 and can excite voters who want to protect their nation and their prosperity, he could cruise to reelection.

Cruz’s optimism, tempered by practical challenges ahead for Republicans, really came through in the video.  Really, the entire interview reminded me why I liked Ted Cruz so much the first time.  I’d love to see him remain a major presence throughout the next five years, and to see him run for the presidency again in 2024 (him, or Nikki Haley).

Regardless, I encourage you to listen to this interview.  Take Cruz’s warning to heart:  don’t get complacent, because the Democrats aren’t.

Election Day 2018

The Portly Politico6 Comments

This blog has fallen dormant—has it often seems to do—during the height of election season.  A savvy, dedicated blogger would churn out the bulk of his content when the news comes fast and fresh, and folks are seeking out information about candidates—not during the middle of summer, the deadest time for political news, outside of some primary elections.

But, hey, that’s what makes The Portly Politico unique.

What won’t make it unique is this admonition:  VOTE.  Ideally—and if you’re a reader of this blog, this might go without saying—vote for Republicans.

I went out to vote this morning—the last time at my current precinct, as I’ve recently moved to the countryside (after two floods, it was time)—and it was hoppin’.  I arrived around 7:05 AM EST, and there was a line out the door.  I finished voting around 7:40 AM EST—that’s how many people were there to vote.

I’ve never experienced a midterm election this year.  Both sides are highly energized.  It feels like a presidential election.

I’ll refrain from offering detailed analysis at this point (I think Republicans will pick up some Senate seats, but the House is a complete toss-up), but this election—to recycle another cliché, but only because it’s true—is of the utmost importance.

If Republicans lose the House (which, I’ll confess, seems likely, albeit by a narrow margin), it will certainly stymie President Trump and the GOP’s conservative agenda.  The prospect of returning Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi to the Speaker position is also terrifying.

If Republicans lose the Senate, it will be utterly catastrophic.  You can kiss conservative Supreme Court nominees goodbye.  If you’re the most anti-Trumpist #NeverTrumper neocon that ever lived, you’ve gotta hold your nose and vote Republican for that reason alone.

If we lose both… well, I shudder to contemplate the kangaroo court of baseless investigations and accusations that Democratic Congress will unleash.  Impeachment might not result in removal, but the fraying fabric of our political system would be rent asunder as Democratic knives stab any opposition.

This election is a referendum on Trump and Trumpism, yes, but it’s also a series of choices:  the Constitution, or lawlessness.  Capitalism, or communism.  Rule by the people, or rule by an entrenched, technocratic elite.

Get out there and vote, folks—especially Republicans!